Can video tracks be edited in DVDA?

[John Rofrano]

> Is there a way to edit that in DVDA, and then use the newly encoded title .mpg at the head — or do I need to re-encode the whole video part again?

DVD Architect is just an assemble tool to author DVD’s. It has no editing capabilities but there is a way in Vegas Pro.

You should not have to re-render everything. Vegas pro will “smart-render” MPEG2 files if the source and target format match. I would change the titles and render them to MPEG2. Then place the existing MPEG2 file and new MPEG2 titles into a new Vegas project and render once again to MPEG2. The preview window should turn black with a message that no recompression is necessary. At this point it will just be stitching the two MPEG2 files together with no loss of quality and it will go very quickly.

If that doesn’t work, I can highly recommend Womble MPEG-VCR. It can stitch together MPEG2 files without any re-encoding. It has saved me on a number of occasions.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Joe Mantaratz]

If I understand you correctly you want to add a title before the beginning of your media. You cannot edit that in DVDA but you certainly can create it in your NLE and then just bring it into DVDA and then import is using INSERT INTRODUCTION MEDIA. HAve the end action for the media point (link) to your desired clip. DVDA has no editing capabilities it all had to been in your editor. If you keep that in mind it will save you some headaches later on. Of course adding menu button, text and background media is not really the editing you are talking about. Hope this helps.
Joe

[Joe Mantaratz]

Thanks John for that added info it would have saved me many times.

[John Rofrano]

You’re welcome, Joe.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Jeffrey Ellis]

Hi, John–

Heh. Overnight I re-encoded the whole second section.

But… Toast and no Mac program is playing nice with it. I chose the DVDA mpg widescreen video stream render setting.

So now the question, do I have to re-render the whole thing in Vegas , or can I bring in two video files to DVDA, and then the one audio file which was the audio for whole thing, both the titles and the main picture?

[John Rofrano]

> So now the question, do I have to re-render the whole thing in Vegas , or can I bring in two video files to DVDA, and then the one audio file which was the audio for whole thing, both the titles and the main picture?

Nope. One video file, one audio file, that’s all you get. DVD Architect is not and editor.

As I said, you should be able to splice them together in Vegas with no loss if it smart-renders.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Jeffrey Ellis]

Ok, I’ll give it a shot.

Thanks again for the great help, John. I could never have gotten through this project without you.

Best,
Jeffrey

[John Rofrano]

Don’t thank me until it works. 😉 but you’re welcome.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Jeffrey Ellis]

Well, You were right. I encoded the titles as an m2v in Canopus, now I can’t import it into vegas.

[Jeffrey Ellis]

Looks like if I take the original .mov, which vegas does recognize, and put it in with the finished .mpg for the rest of the picture, vegas will indeed smart-render. So I guess we’ll now see if the titles have lost any quality.

They were exported out of FCP as QT Animation.